There's no place for love in the harsh, barren landscape of the Old West, but apparently there's plenty of room for humor. John Maclean's inventive, witty Western Slow West is an odd stab at an oft-deconstructed genre. Certainly a good deal funnier and smarter than A Million Ways to Die in the West without making much of an effort to be so, the film also has the violence and bravado we've come to expect from the genre.
Kodi Smit-McPhee leads this Wild West oater as Jay Cavendish, a lovelorn young man traveling the merciless frontier to find his lady love, Rose Ross (Caren Pistorius). Along with her father (Rory McCann), Rose has fled to escape the law after a murder. But Jay has no clue the woman he seeks is a fugitive, he's just following where his heart leads him. Jay isn't built for the dangers he'll face and would probably die a horrible death if it weren't for Silas (Michael Fassbender), a gunslinging outlaw he encounters totally by chance. They strike a deal: Silas will accompany Jay and keep him alive for a fee, if they manage to survive.
If you've seen True Grit or any one of many Westerns about mismatched pairs on the dusty trail, then it won't be a surprise to learn Jay and Silas don't exactly start off as best buds. Silas is a killer, a shoot-first type and Jay takes issue with his approach even as it saves their lives time and again. But Silas is nothing compared to what's on their tail, including a gang of thugs led by Payne (Ben Mendelsohn), and other bounty hunters looking to collect.
Maclean slyly comments on familiar themes in the Western genre, from the inherent evil within man to the cultural devastation done to the Native Americans as this country was built. Using an economy of dialogue and striking visuals, Maclean tells a simple but soulful story that hits you with bursts of bloodshed and sharp gallows humor. Gun fights are frequent but short-lived, and each death has a certain impact on both Jay and Silas' journey. While not truly a story of redemption, as most of these "trail" movies tend to be, Slow West dispels notions of what it means to be a hero in the Old West.
Fassbender does most of his talking in narration, waxing poetically on the "jackrabbit" Jay while treating him gruffly in actual conversation. Mostly he's a man of action with a commanding countenance that meshes well with Smit-McPhee's naivete. And of course it's always great any time Mendelsohn gets to play the bad guy, although his role here is more patriarchal than flamboyantly villainous. Jed Kurzel's score fits the mercurial tone of the film, bounding between dusty guitar riffs and lightly comedic chords. While some may complain about the movie's pacing, it's an extremely linear narrative...plus nobody can argue about false advertising. It's called Slow West for a reason. At barely 90 minutes in length you won't care for long that the film takes its time getting where it needs to go, and that's one final, epic gunfight that again bucks our every expectation. For his directorial debut, Mclean has chosen a tough genre to crack successfully, but Slow West works on just about every level and is worth making a journey to see.
Rating: 4 out of 5
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